1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an information search and collection method and system which, when collecting certain specific information from the Internet, collects information corresponding to the request of a user from among a multitude of information relating to a keyword input by the user, and outputs this collected information as comprehensive information.
2. Description of Related Art
Recently, it has become possible to search for and collect all types of information using the Internet. When searching and collecting information over the Internet, there is for example a search method such that a keyword input by the user is entered into a search engine, and the addresses of all of the pages hit using that keyword are output.
For example, assuming information about a particular famous person is to be collected, the name of that person is input as the keyword, and the addresses of all pages hit using that keyword are output. Through this, the user obtains the desired information through an operation such as accessing pages identified by the search engine where the information needed by the user appears to exist, and extracting only the necessary information.
However, with the above-described search and collection method, when the person on which information is being collected is active in many fields, if a search is made using only the name as a keyword, the number of pages that are searched can at times be several hundred pages. Not only is this true for people, but can occur when obtaining information about a particular facility. For example, if the facility is famous there is a large possibility that information on that facility exists in various fields, and thus when search and collection are conducted using the facility name as the keyword, an enormous number of pages is searched.
As a method to improve even slightly the trouble of this search and collection process, it is possible, for example, to input a plurality of keywords expressing the information to be collected and to output the addresses of pages hit using all of the keywords, and to restrict the information to a certain degree such as by outputting only the addresses of pages where more than a set number of the keywords appear.
For example, when collecting various information relating to the main field of activity of a famous person active in a wide range of fields, the name of the person and the primary occupation are input as keywords, and only the addresses of pages hit using both keywords are output, so that the number of pages extracted is greatly restricted.
However, even when pages are extracted using a certain degree of restriction in this summer, there are many times when the information really required by the user is not all of the extracted pages, but only a portion thereof, and in effect it is necessary for the user to go through the effort of choosing and selecting the necessary information from among the extracted pages.
In this way, with the current level of research services, even when a certain degree of restriction of the information is accomplished, it is still ultimately necessary for the user to personally search for the necessary information from among the large quantity of identified information and compile a single information page. Accordingly, there is a need to improve the ease of use of such information search and collection methods and systems.
Hence, it is an objective of the present invention to analyze the input request from the user on the basis of keywords from the user, convert the request from the user into a format understandable by the system, perform searching and collecting of information on the basis of a predetermined algorithm, and provide comprehensive information in accordance with the request input from the user.